


The May Queen

by basilique



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, New love, bigender merlin, cheer up darling, which turns happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-08-16 23:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8121160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilique/pseuds/basilique
Summary: Merlin is good at keeping secrets. And there is a secret he has kept all his life. Even from Will, when they kissed behind the well-house and shared their schoolyard secrets. Even from Gaius, who knows him better than anyone else. Even from Lancelot, who knew about his magic from the start. Even from Gwen, who he would trust with his life. 


Even from Arthur.





	1. The Tryst

Prince Arthur is absent from the May Day festivities. He has disappeared _as if by magic_ from his chambers. 

No one has been able to track him down, and at this point, it is clear that he is going to miss the celebrations. 

Down in the village, the pipers play, and the people are dancing. In a small field just outside of the town square, they have erected a maypole. The women are dressed like nymphs of the spring, in their lightest dresses, with sprigs of lavender or daisies tucked behind their ears. And they perform the dance of the maypole. 

Each woman or girl holds one of the long ribbons attached to the central pole, and they skip and dance in a joyous circle, ducking around one another to weave the ribbons together around the pole. At the base of the pole stands Guinevere, this year’s May Queen, radiantly beautiful as she smiles in the good spirit of the game. 

Gwen wears a yellow garland of golden rod, and ribbons braided into her long hair. She stands straight with her back against the pole. The women will dance in a circle around her, weaving their ribbons, until they have quite tied her to the pole, in the tradition of the game. 

The smallest children throw grubby handfuls of apple blossoms over the dancers, and the men cheer them on merrily. 

Merlin stops to watch the dance on his way back from the forest. He has been collecting herbs for Gaius. 

Camelot’s forests are alive today. Sunlight streams through the canopy of leaves, and sparkles where it hits the streams. The small woodland creatures chase each other up and down the trees, and the crocuses push up through the roots in patches of sunlight, and bloom purple and white. The streams bubble lustily over roots and stones. In the orchards, apple blossoms fall, swirling like sweet-smelling snow. 

There is no day more lusty and bright than May Day. And there is no one in Camelot more radiant than Gwen, laughing as the ribbons begin to bind her to the pole. 

The dance is only for the women, and they say that no man can understand or dance it. But Merlin, looking on, feels an old and familiar longing. 

He understands the dance. And he has danced it in his mind every year since he came to Camelot. But he has danced it alone. 

Merlin is good at keeping secrets. And there is a secret he has kept all his life. Even from Will, when they kissed behind the well-house and shared their schoolyard secrets. Even from Gaius, who knows him better than anyone else. Even from Lancelot, who knew about his magic from the start. Even from Gwen, who he would trust with his life. 

Even from Arthur. 

The secret was that inside of Merlin there lived another spirit. She was Emrys. And Merlin was she. 

It wasn’t that Merlin minded wearing men’s clothes, most of the time. Taking on men’s roles. Because he was a man. But at the same time, he _was_ a woman. The name Emrys was his name, as much as the name Merlin was. 

And Merlin knew that it was nothing to be ashamed of. If someone else had confided such a thing to him, he would have told them it was beautiful and powerful. But nonetheless, he was ashamed of it in himself. It seemed like the sort of secret that was too incomprehensible, too isolating, to ever share with another person. 

And so he had kept the secret...yes, _even from Arthur_ …his beautiful, golden prince. 

Merlin mounted the steps of the castle. He could put thoughts of the maypole dance, and the sad, old longing it had aroused in him aside for the time being. There was something _much_ more pleasant to think about, now that he was back at the castle. 

He would have to make a stupendous effort to hide his giddy, love-struck grin from Gaius when he dropped-off the basket of herbs, and to make it seem like he wasn’t in a terrible hurry to leave. 

Because while the rest of the kingdom searched, Merlin knew _exactly_ where Prince Arthur was. And he knew that Arthur was waiting, desperate with impatient love, for Merlin to meet him there.


	2. The World Within the Bubble

Merlin glances over his shoulder, down both ends of the hallway, before he slips into Arthur's quarters. He can't be seen going in; it would be certain to arouse curiosity when he is not seen going out. 

Because Arthur is in here. Or at least, the way to him is. 

Mid-morning sunlight streams in, quiet and solitary, through the windows. The bed is made, the red canopy emaculate. And the bathtub is still full from Arthur's bath this morning, the water lying lukewarm under a layer of frothy bubbles. 

It is to the bathtub that Merlin goes. 

He rolls up his sleeve, and reaches down into the water. He feels for a moment, and... _there_. He lifts out a bubble, large enough to rest in his cupped hand, flexible and fluttering I'm the wind from his breath, but impossible to pop. 

But the bubble does not reflect Merlin's face as he holds it up, or the room around him. It reflects a different scene altogether; a scene that is not there. A pastoral meadow, radiant with bright, tall flowers swaying in the warm wind of another world. 

Merlin has only to close his eyes, and he has traveled. He feels that warm wind on his face, and when he opens his eyes, he is standing in that field, with flowers brushing against his knees. 

Merlin is inside of the bubble, completely cut off from the outside world. And somewhere in this world, somewhere nearby, is Arthur. 

They will not be found. They can have the whole day alone together. 

Merlin's heart beats quickly with pleasing anticipation. They have not had time like this yet; not since last week, when they made their feelings known to each other. 

Merlin had been receiving flowers; baskets of them, left in front of Gaius' door by an anonymous source. For a month, they came nearly every day; timid, early flowers of April. 

Merlin had been utterly perplexed, and he had wholeheartedly resisted Gaius' assertions that he had a secret admirer. 

"That can't be, Gaius. Who on earth could it be? There's no one in Camelot who feels that way about me." 

"Well, unless someone is trying to woo _me_ , Merlin..." Gaius had said dryly. 

The answer had come after three weeks. 

The bleeding hearts bloomed, pink and white, all along the wall gardens of the village houses, and they began to appear each morning in the basket, along with the sprigs of delicate baby's breath. 

On a Sunday afternoon, while washing Arthur's clothes, Merlin discovered a strand of bleeding hearts tucked into the breast of one of Arthur's shirts. 

The blooms were a little crushed and ripped, from being pressed against Arthur's chest, but Merlin lifted them out and held them in his palm like diamonds, feeling such a sweet, ardent rush of hope that he could barely breathe. 

He'd walked into Arthur's quarters, where the prince was sharpening his knives, and when Arthur had looked around to ask what he wanted, Merlin had simply held up the little crushed strand of flowers. 

Arthur had gone red to the roots of his hair, and with this incredible confirmation of the truth, Merlin had run to him, and they had kissed for the fifteen best minutes of Merlin's life. 

Even thinking of it now gives Merlin happy chills. Kissing Arthur is like learning to do something new with his magic; a rush of discovery and pleasure that makes him feel awake, aware, _alive_. 

He sets off through the meadow, eager to find him. 

It's easy to guess where to go. Behind Merlin, the meadow tapers into a sandy coastline. Before him, it turns into a deep, dense forest. Arthur will have headed for the forest, and through it. It's his nature; he will always turn toward the greater challenge. 

Merlin makes his way through the forest with ease. He knows every branch, and every protruding root, because he crafted them himself. It was a new spell, and a wonderfully satisfying one, to build a small, confined world with the power of his imagination. 

The forest is cool and rich with thick moss and brooks of soft water. And when he comes out on the other side, it is to see the landscape that he is most proud of. 

A grove of golden willow trees stands beside a lake. Their shimmering boughs hang all the way to the mossy ground which is speckled with dark blue pools of water. Lilies bloom on lily pads in the deep pools, and little golden fishes dart around their underwater stalks. 

Merlin takes off his shoes and leaves them at the edge of the forest. He walks between pools of water, on the floor of moss and moss flowers, to a willow tree about a hundred yards away. 

He doesn't know how he knows that Arthur is there. But he knows it with total certainty, and he also knows that Arthur knew he would find him with no difficulty. 

Merlin brushes back the curtain of golden willow boughs, and finds Arthur asleep at the roots of the tree, his weapons, for once, laid carelessly aside, and his face blissful.


End file.
